Decadal patterns of disaster damage and recovery-to-damage dynamics in South Korea (2015–2024) with a context-sensitive comparison to Japan

Understanding disaster recovery is essential for effective risk management, yet recovery processes are often implicitly assumed to scale proportionally with disaster damage. This study examines disaster damage and recovery patterns in South Korea and Japan to assess whether recovery dynamics are linear, homogeneous, and comparable across contexts. Using official national statistics, we analyze annual disaster damage and recovery expenditure in South Korea from 2015 to 2024, disaggregated by hazard type and administrative region, and compare these patterns with disaster-related fatalities in Japan from 2015 to 2023. For South Korea, results show substantial interannual variability in recovery expenditure, while statistical analysis indicates a strong and approximately proportional relationship between damage and recovery at the aggregate level. Hazard-specific analysis reveals variation in recovery intensity across disaster types, while regional analysis highlights notable spatial disparities. Extreme disaster years exhibit deviations from proportional scaling, suggesting that large events can trigger additional recovery processes beyond direct asset restoration. The cross-national comparison illustrates that disaster response indicators show different temporal patterns between South Korea and Japan when aligned with national disaster management priorities. While recovery-to-damage ratios capture fiscal recovery intensity in South Korea, disaster-related fatalities reflect the human impacts emphasized in Japan. Comparisons using scaled indicators further show that temporal response patterns do not peak synchronously across the two countries, underscoring structural differences in disaster management systems. Overall, the findings suggest that disaster recovery is a context-dependent process shaped by hazard characteristics, spatial conditions, and institutional priorities, with variability emerging around an underlying proportional relationship. Meaningful international comparisons therefore require indicator choices sensitive to national frameworks rather than uniform metrics. This study provides empirical evidence supporting a more nuanced approach to analyzing and comparing disaster recovery across countries.